Newsdesk

Rights in the News: East Georgia Continues to Burn Under FIRE’s Limelight

Georgia continues to be a focal point of FIRE’s efforts, as news of East Georgia College’s outrageous treatment of Professor Thomas Thibeault becomes ever more evident, and the news more widespread. (It even turned up in the weekly academic freedom media roundup from the international Scholars at Risk Network—goodness!) This week, Breitbart.tv held the magnifying lens to ECG in a terrific interview with Thibeault during which he spends upwards of twenty-five minutes detailing his treatment, to the co-hosts’ increasing dismay. It is well worth your time if you haven’t listened to it yet.

Elsewhere, Will’s editorial in the Providence Journal takes Yale University Press to task this week over its capitulation to political correctness and the generalized threat of violence by removing cartoons depicting Mohammed from the book The Cartoons That Shook the World, by Brandeis University Professor Jytte Klausen. (See also the National Coalition Against Censorship–authored letter co-signed by FIRE.) News Blaze is among the other publications adding its voice to the chorus of disbelief on the issue, in an article that also discusses another well-known case of a Brandeis professor—that of Donald Hindley.

As we publicized last week, an ad from FIRE was rejected for publication by the student newspaper The Bucknellian over fears of legal reprisal from the Bucknell University administration. The Student Press Law Center covers this newest aspect of the ongoing crisis of free speech at Bucknell here.

Lastly, a round of shout-outs are in order for 2009 summer interns Noah Baron, John Cetta, and Daniel Ortner, and 2007 summer intern Braum Katz. Read on to see the latest in their advocacy efforts, respectively, at Columbia, Cornell, Brandeis, and William and Mary.